Mass media is the means of communicating to the public. In this lesson, you will learn about the different platforms for mass media and the impact of mass media on society.
What is mass media?
Think about it for a second: Whenever you want to listen to your favorite song, watch your favorite show, or see the latest current events, where do you go? You most likely turn on your television, radio, or computer. The source from which the majority of the public gets their news and information is considered mass media.
Mass media means technology designed to reach a mass audience. It is the primary means of communication used to reach the vast majority of the public. The most common platforms for mass media are newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and the Internet. The general public generally relies on mass media to provide information on political issues, social issues, entertainment, and pop culture news.
Types of Mass Media
Mass media has evolved significantly over time. Have you ever wondered how the latest news and information was communicated in the past? Well, before there was the internet, television or radio, there was the newspaper. The newspaper was the original platform for mass media. For a long time, the public relied on writers and journalists to ensure that local newspapers provided them with the latest news about current events.
Centuries later, in the 1890s came the invention of radio. Radio would soon replace newspapers as the most relevant source of mass media. Families would gather around the radio and listen to their favorite radio station programs to hear the latest news on politics, social issues, and entertainment.
Later down the line came the invention of television. Television would soon replace radio for the most effective platform to reach the general public. Today, the Internet is the most relevant form of mass media and has become an important tool for news outlets. Since the development of the Internet, the general public can now access the same news agencies instantly with just the click of a mouse, instead of having to wait for scheduled programs.
The role and influence of mass media
Mass media are communications-whether written, broadcast, or spoken-that reach large audiences. They include television, radio, advertising, movies, the Internet, newspapers, magazines, and so on.
Mass media are a significant force in modern culture, especially in America. Sociologists refer to this as a mediated culture, where media reflect and create culture. Communities and individuals are constantly bombarded with messages from a variety of sources such as television, billboards, and magazines, to name a few. These messages promote not only products, but also moods, attitudes, and a sense of what is important and what is not. Mass media enable the concept of celebrity: without the ability of movies, magazines, and news media to reach thousands of miles, people could not become famous. In fact, in the past, only political and business leaders and the notorious few outlaws were famous. Only recently have actors, singers and other social elites become celebrities or “stars.””
The current level of media saturation did not always exist. As recently as the 1960s and 1970s, for example, television consisted mainly of three networks, public broadcasting and a few local independent stations. These channels directed their programming primarily to two-parent, middle-class families. Despite this, some middle-class households did not even own a television. Today, one can find one television in the poorest homes and several televisions in most middle-class homes. Not only has availability increased, but programming is becoming more diverse, with shows designed to appeal to all ages, incomes, backgrounds, and attitudes. This widespread availability and exposure makes television the primary focus of most mass media discussions. More recently, the Internet has increased its role exponentially as more businesses and households subscribe. “Although television and the Internet have dominated mass media, movies and magazines-especially those that line the aisles at grocery store checkout counters-also play a strong role in the culture, as do other forms of media.
What is the role of mass media? Legislators, media managers, local school officials, and sociologists have all debated this controversial question. While opinions vary on the extent and nature of mass media’s influence, all sides agree that mass media are an integral part of modern culture. There are three main sociological perspectives on the role of the media: limited effects theory, class dominant theory, and culturalist theory.
Theory of limited effects
Limited effects theory argues that media exert negligible influence because people generally choose what to watch or read based on what they already believe. This theory emerged and was tested in the 1940s and 1950s. Studies that examined the ability of media to influence voices found that well-informed people relied more on personal experience, prior knowledge, and their own reasoning. Media “experts,” however, were more likely to influence those who were less informed. Critics point to two problems with this perspective. First, they contend that limited effects theory ignores the role of the media in shaping and limiting the discussion and debate of issues. How media shape the debate and what questions members of the media ask changes the outcome of the discussion and the possible conclusions people can draw. Second, this theory emerged when the availability and dominance of media was far less common.
Class-dominant theory
Class-dominant theory argues that the media reflect and project the views of a minority elite that controls them. The people who own and control the companies that produce media include this elite. Proponents of this view are particularly concerned with massive corporate mergers of media organizations that limit competition and put large corporations in the reins of media-especially news media. Their concern is that if ownership is restricted, Some people then have the ability to manipulate what people can see or hear. For example, owners can easily avoid or silence stories that expose unethical corporate behavior or hold companies accountable for their actions.
The problem of sponsorship contributes to this problem. Advertising dollars fund most media. Networks target the largest possible audience because the broader the appeal, the larger the potential buying audience, and the easier it is to sell airtime to advertisers. For example, news organizations may shy away from negative stories about companies (especially parent companies) that fund large advertising campaigns in their newspaper or on their stations. Television stations that received millions of dollars in advertising from companies such as Nike and other textile manufacturers were slow to deliver stories in their newscasts about possible human rights abuses by these companies abroad.
Media observers identify the same problem at the local level, where city newspapers do not give bad reviews to new cars or tell stories about selling a home without a realtor because the bulk of their funding comes from car and real estate advertising. This influence extends to programming as well. In the 1990s, one network canceled a short-term drama with clear religious sentiments, Christy, because, although very popular and beloved in rural America, the program did not rate well among young urbanites that advertisers were targeting in ads.
Critics of this theory counter these arguments, saying that local control of news media is largely beyond the reach of large corporate offices and that the quality of news depends on good journalists. They contend that those who are less powerful and do not have control of the media have often received full media coverage and subsequent support. They cite numerous environmental causes, the anti-nuclear movement, the anti-Vietnam movement, and the pro-Gulf War movement as examples.
While most people argue that a corporate elite controls the media, a variation on this approach argues that a politically “liberal” elite controls the media. They point out that journalists who are better educated than the general population hold more liberal political views, consider themselves “left of center,” and are more likely to register as Democrats. They further point to examples from the media itself and to the statistical reality that the media more often labels conservative commentators or politicians as ‘conservative’ than liberals as ‘liberal.’
Media language can also be revealing. Media use the terms “arc” or “ultra” conservative, but rarely or never use the terms “arc” or “ultra” liberal. Those who argue that a political elite controls the media also point out that the movements that have attracted media attention-environmental, anti-nuclear, and anti-Vietnam-generally support liberal political themes. Predominantly conservative political issues have not yet received prominent media attention or have been rejected by the media. Proponents of this view point to the Reagan Administration’s Strategic Arms Initiative of the 1980s. Media quickly characterized the defense program as” Star Wars ” and linked it to an expensive fantasy. The public could not support it, and the program received no funding or congressional support.
Culturalist Theory
Culturalist theory, developed in the 1980s and 1990s, combines the other two theories and asserts that people interact with media to create their own meanings from the images and messages they receive. This theory views audiences as playing an active rather than passive role in relation to mass media. One branch of research focuses on audiences and how they interact with media; the other branch of research focuses on those who produce the media, especially the news.
Theorists emphasize that audiences choose what to watch among a variety of options, choose how much to watch, and may select the mute button or the VCR remote via programming selected by the network or cable station. Studies of mass media completed by sociologists parallel text reading and interpretation research completed by linguists (people who study language). Both groups of researchers note that when people approach material, whether written text or media images and messages, they interpret that material based on their own knowledge and experience.
Thus, when researchers ask different groups to explain the meaning of a particular song or video, the groups generate widely different interpretations based on age, gender, race, ethnicity, and religious background. Therefore, culturalist theorists contend that while some elite in large corporations can exert considerable control over what information media produce and distribute, personal perspective plays a stronger role in how audiences interpret these messages.
